a. 
Captions
a. Sketch of the pollard willows in Etten. Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, Nienke Bakker (eds.) (2009), Vincent van Gogh - The Letters. Version: January 2020. Amsterdam & The Hague: Van Gogh Museum & Huygens ING. Letter 175.
b. Road from Bosschenhoofd to pollard willows.
c. Glimpse of a marsh?
d. e. See title.
f. Yours truly, geeking out.
g. The yellow potato thing, machine.
Notes
1. Justine de Jong and Pierre van Damme, “Van Gogh Monumenten in Brabant”, Stichting Van Gogh Brabant, 2017.
2. Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, Nienke Bakker (eds.) (2009), Vincent van Gogh - The Letters. Version: January 2020. Amsterdam & The Hague: Van Gogh Museum & Huygens ING. Letter 175.
3. Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, Nienke Bakker (eds.) (2009), Vincent van Gogh - The Letters. Version: January 2020. Amsterdam & The Hague: Van Gogh Museum & Huygens ING. Letter 292.
a. Sketch of the pollard willows in Etten. Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, Nienke Bakker (eds.) (2009), Vincent van Gogh - The Letters. Version: January 2020. Amsterdam & The Hague: Van Gogh Museum & Huygens ING. Letter 175.
b. Road from Bosschenhoofd to pollard willows.
c. Glimpse of a marsh?
d. e. See title.
f. Yours truly, geeking out.
g. The yellow potato thing, machine.
Notes
1. Justine de Jong and Pierre van Damme, “Van Gogh Monumenten in Brabant”, Stichting Van Gogh Brabant, 2017.
2. Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, Nienke Bakker (eds.) (2009), Vincent van Gogh - The Letters. Version: January 2020. Amsterdam & The Hague: Van Gogh Museum & Huygens ING. Letter 175.
3. Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, Nienke Bakker (eds.) (2009), Vincent van Gogh - The Letters. Version: January 2020. Amsterdam & The Hague: Van Gogh Museum & Huygens ING. Letter 292.
009. ETTEN-LEUR | THE NETHERLANDS | 25/10/20
I’m still in search of pollard willows. They weren’t in the Stationsstraat, where they were during Van Gogh’s time. So in between that trip, my first one to Etten-Leur, and this one, my second, to its environs, I’ve checked this online document made by Van Gogh Brabant which lists the locations in the province that attest to the man’s life and work.1 In its section on pollard willows, it refers to two streets running parallel to one another just outside central Etten-Leur. Google Street View confirms it: this is where the pollard willows are.
The drive there is beautiful. Wide roads flanked by big lush trees, sunlight playing with the stormy clouds. I catch a glimpse of the kind of lake/marsh/pond Van Gogh might have drawn in Marsh with water lilies - except the document by Van Gogh Brabant lists its location as De Oude Leemput.
So back to square one. It’s a thing that shouldn’t matter but that is beginning to, in the back of my mind. The lack of a clear answer. Where the hell did he draw the damn thing?
But then I turn right, onto a dirt track, just a fifteen-minute drive from Bosschenhoofd, the hotel, and there they are, the pollard willows, two rows on either side of a ditch. I’m inserting a few pictures into the body of the text, just the once, just so I can be sure you get the gist:
![]()
It’s the highlight of the trip. Hard to describe why, to explain the joy I’m feeling, seeing these trees. In one of the letters Van Gogh wrote while he was drawing the willows, he refers to them as living beings:
And a year later, writing from The Hague, he compares them to actual human beings:
Van Gogh here is just beginning to make the very hesitant and haphazard shift from figure to landscape, but more than that the way he describes these trees makes me look at in a different way. He’s got a point, of course:
![e.]()
For the first time, I feel like being here brings me just a little bit closer to Van Gogh’s experience. Even if these aren’t the exact willows he drew, the essence’s here, I think.
The roar of an engine makes me turn round. A tractor hauls a huge container filled to the brim with potatoes, and there, on the other side of the road, an enormous bright yellow machine is harvesting them from the field. Couldn’t have made it up, how apt this is. The contrast and the continuity.
Drive back along the other side of the ditch. There’s houses here, factories, big greenhouses. The pastoral and the industrial side by side, and this too is wonderfully thematic, landscape clashing with industry, but also growing into one another. How deliciously fitting this all is.
Comments? Questions? Do drop me a line:
︎ @eightytoninety
︎ eightytoninety
︎ viola@eightytoninety.com
Found: pollard willows
I’m still in search of pollard willows. They weren’t in the Stationsstraat, where they were during Van Gogh’s time. So in between that trip, my first one to Etten-Leur, and this one, my second, to its environs, I’ve checked this online document made by Van Gogh Brabant which lists the locations in the province that attest to the man’s life and work.1 In its section on pollard willows, it refers to two streets running parallel to one another just outside central Etten-Leur. Google Street View confirms it: this is where the pollard willows are.
The drive there is beautiful. Wide roads flanked by big lush trees, sunlight playing with the stormy clouds. I catch a glimpse of the kind of lake/marsh/pond Van Gogh might have drawn in Marsh with water lilies - except the document by Van Gogh Brabant lists its location as De Oude Leemput.
So back to square one. It’s a thing that shouldn’t matter but that is beginning to, in the back of my mind. The lack of a clear answer. Where the hell did he draw the damn thing?
But then I turn right, onto a dirt track, just a fifteen-minute drive from Bosschenhoofd, the hotel, and there they are, the pollard willows, two rows on either side of a ditch. I’m inserting a few pictures into the body of the text, just the once, just so I can be sure you get the gist:
It’s the highlight of the trip. Hard to describe why, to explain the joy I’m feeling, seeing these trees. In one of the letters Van Gogh wrote while he was drawing the willows, he refers to them as living beings:
I feel more and more as time goes on that figure drawing in particular is good, that it also works indirectly to the good of landscape drawing. If one draws a pollard willow as though it were a living being, which it actually is, then the surroundings follow more or less naturally, if only one has focused all one’s attention on that one tree and hasn’t rested until there was some life in it.2
And a year later, writing from The Hague, he compares them to actual human beings:
Today I worked on old drawings from Etten, because I saw the pollard willows again in a similar leafless state here in the field, and what I had seen last year came to mind again. Sometimes I long so much to do landscape, just as one would for a long walk to refresh oneself, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expression and a soul, as it were. A row of pollard willows sometimes resembles a procession of orphan men.3
Van Gogh here is just beginning to make the very hesitant and haphazard shift from figure to landscape, but more than that the way he describes these trees makes me look at in a different way. He’s got a point, of course:
For the first time, I feel like being here brings me just a little bit closer to Van Gogh’s experience. Even if these aren’t the exact willows he drew, the essence’s here, I think.
The roar of an engine makes me turn round. A tractor hauls a huge container filled to the brim with potatoes, and there, on the other side of the road, an enormous bright yellow machine is harvesting them from the field. Couldn’t have made it up, how apt this is. The contrast and the continuity.
Drive back along the other side of the ditch. There’s houses here, factories, big greenhouses. The pastoral and the industrial side by side, and this too is wonderfully thematic, landscape clashing with industry, but also growing into one another. How deliciously fitting this all is.
Comments? Questions? Do drop me a line:
︎ @eightytoninety
︎ eightytoninety
︎ viola@eightytoninety.com